In the Half Light
by ncfan
Summary: One of the first things he learns is the importance of keeping secrets.


I own nothing.

* * *

"Can you understand me, Lómion? I know that I have not been able to teach you much."

One of the things Lómion learns earliest on in life is the importance of keeping secrets. The name his mother gave him is one of the greatest, but this is the secret most in need of keeping, her ritual of speaking to him in a tongue never used except when they are alone.

He nods. "Yes, Mama," and if Lómion answers her in Sindarin rather than Quenya, Aredhel only shakes her head slightly, and they continue on like that.

There are only two occasions that Aredhel ever takes her son out into the woods, trying painstakingly to teach him her tongue. One, is when Eöl is sequestered away in his forge. Lómion knows—indeed, everyone knows—him to be insensible to all that goes on outside the door in such a situation. The second is when he is away from Nan Elmoth altogether, and not likely to be back for weeks at least. The latter circumstance is safer, and what applies right now.

At such times, Lómion goes with his mother into the shadowed woods. They walk through the trees until the hall is no longer in sight, her grasp on his hand tight and taut as though she fears he will be taken from her if she lets go. Even when others might assume that they are alone, Aredhel looks all around her anxiously, and Lómion stares into the shadows too. There are no Edhil here, and very rarely are there any animals, land-dwellers or birds. They are alone, and will stay alone so long as they are quiet. Lómion, even young as he is, understands that.

So he'll sit on the forest floor opposite from his mother, as she tries to teach him to speak Quenya. It's slow going; when Lómion's taught Sindarin, he learns letters at the same time that he learns to speak, but Aredhel won't teach him that with Quenya. It would be so easy. All they would have to do is trace out the letters in the earth and scuff them out afterwards, but she won't even do that.

"Remember, Lómion," Aredhel says, stern and anxious all at once. "You must say nothing of this when we are at home. You must not use Quenya when you are at home."

"I remember, Mama," and the effort he makes to say so in Quenya rather than Sindarin make Aredhel smile briefly.

It is a secret that only they share. Lómion is not entirely sure why it is a secret; she will never say. But Lómion understands how important it is to keep secrets. Mama trusts him not to tell anyone about her trying to teach him Quenya, and he can not betray her trust.

And he does like it.

Sindarin doesn't always sit well on Aredhel's tongue; Lómion has watched her struggle with it when she's angry or upset or frightened. It's not what she learned to speak as a little girl; the disconnect between her thoughts and her words is obvious. Quenya sounds strange sometimes, but it flows smoothly off her lips like water, in a way that Sindarin never can. In this tongue, she has ease and mastery and eloquence. He is hearing her as she should be, or as she longs to be.

These are the only times her mind is ever quiet. Aredhel's mind is always jumbled, chaotic and confused. Even when she is outwardly calm, her mind is full of clashing images. Ice and snow, people trapped beneath them. Blood on a sword blade, blood on a street. A fire raging from across a great body of water. Faces Lómion does not recognize, fixed in silent screams. It frightens him sometimes, just a little bit.

But in these moments, when a secret language flows off her mouth, her mind goes quiet. He gets no fragmented images, chaotic and confused. He gets no sense that she is stumbling about the world with no idea of where she's going or what she's doing. The anxiety slides away from her. Her pale, pretty face relaxes, and the tension melts out of her limbs.

She's talking about her home far to the west today. Her mind is full of a pale gold dazzling sky and pennants flapping in the wind. Lómion curls up against her side, pressing his head against her arm. Aredhel doesn't always seem certain of what she's saying. She stumbles over details, falters, can not give names nor even really remember faces. How long must she have been away? Lómion can't imagine how long he would have to have been away from home to forget what his parents look like.

"Mama, I want to see where you lived," he breaks in suddenly, looking out over the dark, silent woods, the image of a golden sky vividly stamped in his mind.

Beside him, Aredhel goes stiff. Lómion looks up at her, and her eyes are staring far away. She clings to that image, as he does. "So did I, sweetheart," she says quietly, switching back to Sindarin, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. "So did I."

-0-0-0-

The walls are still cool and clammy, even when the fire in the forge is burning hot. That alone leaves Lómion amazed; the fire burns so hot and red that he would expect the walls and the floor to be hot as well from the heat. But they're not, and for that, Lómion is grateful. There's something cool for him to lean against when the fire's burning.

If his mother has given Lómion a secret name, his father has not given him a name at all. He asked his father once why he hadn't given him a name, and Eöl would only say "I haven't decided yet." If he addresses him, he calls him 'son', and seems quite content to do so. Lómion wonders, sometimes, _when _exactly Eöl will decide what to name him, but he does not say as much aloud.

His father is nearly impossible to read. Where Aredhel's mind is always open, always jumbled and chaotic, a mine of clashing images, Eöl's is nearly always shut. Shut like a locked door, and just as frustrating. Only in his most unguarded moments is there any difference, any hint of outward thought and images. Perhaps now…

Any attempts at anything are abruptly cut off by Eöl kneeling down and staring under the table, directly into Lómion's face. "I've told you before not to do that," he tells him flatly.

"Sorry." Still curled up against the wall, Lómion smiles sheepishly, and is relieved when a ghost of a smile flits over his father's face in return.

Eöl waves a hand, coaxing him forwards. "Come on, out from under there. I've no desire to explain to your mother how you've come to be roasted from lingering too long in this place at your age."

Lómion clambers out from under the table, bent double to keep from hitting his head. "I was looking for you," he says cheerfully as he comes out of the shadows and into the half-light, the darkness of the forge bathed in flickering red flames. The fire's not been burning long, but already the air is thick and heavy.

"Oh?" There's a decidedly quizzical look on his father's face, still wearing that not-quite-smile as he is. "Is that why you were under the table when I found you?"

Lómion can't really give him an answer on that score.

Eöl lifts him up off the ground and into his arms. "Listen, son," he says more seriously. "I'm busy, and can't have you underfoot. Why don't you go find your mother?"

"Can't find her," Lómion mutters, all traces of good cheer gone. "That's why I was looking for you."

If secrets are a fact of life in Nan Elmoth, here's another. Aredhel is constantly vanishing, and always into the woods. Always wandering, always losing her way, always getting lost. Lómion is usually the first to notice that she's gone, when he goes about the corridors of the hall looking for her, and can not. When that happens, his father goes off into the woods to look for her. Sometimes they won't come back for hours, but they always come back eventually.

For the first time, the air of imperturbable calm around Eöl cracks. "You can't?" he asks, and there is a faint hint of something—worry, or anxiety?—in his slightly raw voice. "Well, where did you see her last?"

"Outside."

Eöl sets him down. "Alright." There's no mistaking the mark of tension on him now. "I'll go find her. Don't follow me."

And so Lómion is left alone, for several hours yet.

-0-0-0-

It's easy for Lómion to tell when his parents are fighting.

There's no shouting. There never is. The silence of Nan Elmoth is nearly sacrosanct, and there is no one who would break it by shouting, except at the greatest need. There are times when Lómion does not feel comfortable to laugh or giggle or even breathe too loudly. If he can discern the strong inclination towards silence, his parents certainly can.

But even if they don't shout and make a great deal of noise, Lómion can still tell when his parents are fighting. The air grows close and oppressively thick, as though the corridors are full of smoke. Through the corridors there comes the cacophonous echoes of anger.

They think they're alone; they always do. Her back is against the wall, the white of her dress looking nearly green in the torchlight. He's caught her shoulder in what can only be a painfully tight grip. The two of them stand in the densest shadows in the corridor, and Lómion watches them, unseen, his breath caught in his throat.

"…Don't know what you…"

"…why are you… There's no…"

"Yes, there is! I've…"

"What are you so afraid of?!"

Anger and fear dominates both their minds; any other thought and emotion has been driven out completely. Lómion watches them, wide-eyed, rooted to the ground. There's no telling where this comes from, or what it can turn into. Fizzle out into muttered apologies; simmer for a long time before re-igniting; keel terrifyingly between intense anger and equally intense affection. They may not fight often, but when they do it's always memorable, always overwhelming.

He's not sure what alerted them to his presence. A sharp intake of breath, or a stumble, or something, but suddenly two pairs of eyes are staring directly at him, dark and pale. Eöl's grip on Aredhel's shoulder slackens and she slips away. Aredhel stops just long enough to heave Lómion up into her arms. "Come along," she whispers, and he can feel her heart hammering in her chest.

As she hurries away, Lómion peers back over his mother's shoulder. Eöl stares after them, silent once more, looking torn and lost himself.

-0-0-0-

Night is for dark dreams.

Night is defined as a time for rest. Lómion gets some sense from his mother that night is darker than day, or supposed to be, but he sees no sign of that. Nan Elmoth is ever cloaked in shadow, sometimes fog as well, or doused with rain, or muffled with the snow that Aredhel dislikes so much. The woods are ever clothed with dusk. There is no time of greater lightness or darkness that Lómion can discern.

Nevertheless, he is put to bed at night, even when he is not tired. All the lights are put out, and the darkness goes from gloom to inky blackness, the sort of darkness that Lómion's eyes take ages to adjust to. That's when the dreams come.

Falling, burning, crashing, bleeding. Stones beneath him and smoke above. This is not always where his dreaming mind takes him, but it is where he goes in sleep often enough for Lómion to dread the beginnings of sleep, the tug of unconsciousness. Smoke clogs in his nostrils and mouth. Blood bubbles in his throat; his lungs drown slowly. He awakes with a start, and sometimes a wail.

If Nan Elmoth is a place of secrets, Lómion has a secret all his own. Never does he tell his parents of what it is he has dreamt. Aredhel will try to get the truth out of him, ask him over and over again what it is that he has dreamt of that causes him so much fear, until she is caving under the weight of her own worry and near tears herself. Eöl only takes him back to the chambers he shares with his wife, and lays his son down to bed between the two of them.

So Lómion goes from his own dark dreams, to that of his parents'. His father's mind is unguarded in sleep, and his mother's forms cohesive images in place of twisting mazes. They have dark dreams to match and surpass even the darkest of his. Sometimes, he wonders if they know of what they dream, when they waken in the morning. They behave as though nothing has happened, as though they have not dreamt, and he searches their faces for strain behind their eyes and the stamp of secret horror in their skins, like poison.

He lies awake in the dark between them, listening to them breathe. Whenever he stretches his mind out, even slightly, he sees them, as vividly as he sees the waking world. His father's dreams are full of darkness. His mother's dreams are full of ice.

His mother.

_There is a woman. Her hair is ragged and dark, her eyes dull. Her skin is not skin so much as it is a thin covering for her skull. Hunger is burned in her bones; it screams with every laborious step. She stands under a sky full of darkness and scattered with pinpricks of light. The ground beneath her feet is full of ice and snow, ice sheets clashing, breaking, grinding. Grinding ice._

_A deer with great antlers flits nervously between the frost-bitten boulders. She sees it, the woman does. She draws an arrow from the quiver on her back, aims, and fires._

_But the deer is too quick and runs away before she can give chase. She struggles to clamber over the rocks after it, but she is left with bleeding palms, bleeding feet, and defeat heavy on her shaking shoulders._

His father.

_There are lights in the darkness, campfires. There are campfires beneath the trees, and there is scattered sparkling light glittering on the surface of water. There is a boy, like Lómion and yet not, dark-haired and pale-skinned. His eyes are dark, bright and keen. They stare deep into the dark, full of hunger and longing and some secret, desperate need._

_Some great, dark beast with eyes like burning coals, red and bright, runs into the camp. The screams of Edhil are torn out in the darkness as the beast rampages through the camp, their blood dashed upon the earth, their bones broken, skulls crushed._

_A tall Edhel screams to the boy, and the boy, eyes full of fright, picks up a firebrand and flings it into the face of the beast. The beast howls, and the boy is trapped beneath its claws, saved only by the spears of the Edhil, spraying black blood across the earth._

Darkness spills from his father's parted, sleeping lips, and his mother has ice beneath her skin in place of blood and flesh. Lómion lies awake in the dark, drowning in both. The black sword sitting in the corner of the room sings him to sleep.

-0-0-0-

There comes a time when the sanctity of silence in Nan Elmoth is broken. She was not screaming when he brought her back, muddy and taking deep, hitching breaths, burying her face in his shoulder, digging her fingernails into his back. Close to moaning with the pain of her broken ankle, but not screaming. But then they set the bone, and she is screaming then, enough to fill all the silence with her voice.

Taken a wrong step in the forest for which she has no eyes to see, it seems.

The door to the chamber has been left ajar, enough for Lómion to peer through inside. Aredhel lies awake, propped up in bed. Her face is still drawn and etched with the memory of pain, but her eyelids are drooping with poppy seed infusions and other heavy medicines, the attempts to make her forget pain until it has passed.

Eöl grips her hand so tight that it amazes Lómion that Aredhel's fingers don't snap off, one by one by one. He kneels by the bed, half-swallowed in shadow. His face waxes white, as hers does. He mutters something low and unintelligible, and she laughs weakly.

The shadow of her pain still leaves Lómion raw himself, weak at the wrists and ankles and stunned nearly senseless by the first wave of it, too shocked to shut the doors of his own mind until his father paused long enough to touch his cheek and shake his shoulder. The sight of her drawn face makes him wince.

Lómion leans too heavily on the door; it swings open and he stumbles. His parents look at him, then at each other. A question lingers behind Aredhel's eyes. It goes unsaid, but whatever it is, Eöl seems to recognize it well enough. He dips his head and kisses her, and then beckons Lómion forward, to say good night to his mother before he has to go to bed.

The nauseating afterimage of her blunted pain follows him into sleep.

* * *

Edhil—Elves (singular: Elf) (Sindarin)


End file.
